Category: property rights

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free trade & free markets general freedom nannyism national politics & policies property rights responsibility

Mr. Jetson, Call Your Office

robot, machinery, Ludd, Luddites, anti-technology, socialism, efficiency, government

Increasingly, people are worrying about robots.

They’re taking our jobs, we’re told. Soon, all we’ll have left are robots. Massive unemployment!

While some find this scenario utopia and bliss,* it sounds dreadful to me.

Silver-plated lining is, I doubt it. This kind of worry about technology making laborers obsolete has been around at least since Ned Ludd, who broke factory machinery to save jobs back in 1779.

How is this next wave of technology any different? If technology destroyed jobs on net, we’d all be unemployed now.

Economist Deirdre McCloskey takes this historical view. Writing in Reason, she says today’s high-tech “innovations have actually raised real wages, correctly measured, because a human supplied with a better tool can produce more outputs. And the point of an economy is production for consumption, not protection of existing jobs.”

We’ve always been losing jobs. And new ones are created. Our worry shouldn’t be the jobs lost to new tech, but the lack of new ones coming into existence because of the oldest tech of all: government.

But you know what industry is least resistant to jobs vanishing to robots? Government itself. Sure, some reductions in public sector jobs have occurred, mainly as a result of decreased revenues in the recent “recession.” The job losses there have not been filled by robots, though. Permanent employee positions have been destroyed . . . too frequently replaced by outsourced consultants.

Could robots replace large swaths of public employees? Maybe that wouldn’t be good, actually. The worst-case scenario might be this: government becoming efficient.

We don’t want bad and efficient government.

Kludge may be better.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Some even see in this development a sort-of science-fiction rationale for making socialism at long last plausible — robots as the new slave class; all the humans in the leisure class! Yeah, right.

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Accountability folly free trade & free markets general freedom local leaders moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies property rights responsibility too much government

Against Flexibility?

Seattle, Oregon, unintended consequences, work hours, scheduling, Fair Work Week, labor

Do politicians have any idea what they are doing?

In Oregon, Senate Bill 828 just passed the Senate and is now being favorably reviewed in the House. The law would require “large employers in specified industries to provide new employee[s] with estimated work schedule and to provide current employee with seven days’ notice of employee[’s] work schedule.”

But will the measure help employees? Really?

The notion is called the “Fair Work Week.” Pushed by Democrats, it has gained bipartisan support. The basic idea: allow time (under full force of law) for workers to manage their own schedules and personal economies.

Trouble is, in the name of making work easier to manage, it attacks flexibility.

Which is something many workers want. More than notification.

Indeed, the study commissioned by the City of Seattle for their similar regulatory scheme acknowledged that reducing flexibility is not necessarily a godsend for workers.

“A more predictable schedule,” the report noted, “is not always one that an employee would prefer. A schedule known with certainty is a cold comfort if it yields too little income to survive.”

The report went on to explain that many of the labor market’s scheduling inconveniences are themselves the result of other government regulations, such as ObamaCare.

Christian Britschgi, writing at Reason, predicts that passing the Oregon law would mean “a fairer worker week” for some, but for others, “no work week at all.”*

Meanwhile, the Seattle study noted that it was workers in small businesses who are most likely to be discomfited by last-minute scheduling changes. The Oregon law applies only to big businesses.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* A standard, negative consequence of most “well-intended” legislation.

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folly free trade & free markets general freedom ideological culture moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies property rights responsibility too much government

Minimally Mugged By Reality

minimum wage, business, pay, workers, fallacy, profit, Bernie Sanders

It should shock no one: forcing businesses to pay steep minimum wages ends up pushing some businesses out . . . of business. Yesterday I looked at what minimum wage laws can do to low-skilled workers. Today, consider the employers. When we make it harder to turn a profit, it becomes harder to profit. Businesses that can’t at least break even close their doors.

Many business owners are inclined to promote, politically, politicians who in turn support minimum wage hikes. Do they change their minds when mugged by reality? Alas, the trauma alone won’t convert a person to principled allegiance to free markets.

I was reminded of this fact by a story about business owners in Minneapolis who stress their Sandernista credentials.  

“I’m a bleeding-heart liberal and I’m a big Bernie Sanders supporter,” says businesswoman Jane Elias, an art store owner. “But this whole flat-out, $15, one-size-fits all is just wrong.” Another victim, restaurant owner Heather Bray, says she’s a “proud, proud progressive.” But: “The arithmetic doesn’t work. People will not continue to go to budget-conscious restaurants when they’re no longer budget-conscious.”

So . . . arbitrary minimum-wage demands don’t add up in light of the demands of running their businesses under their particular circumstances. Well, no disagreement here. But take it further, please. Keep doing the math. The bottom line is that everybody, not just you — and always, not just sometimes — has the right to make his own decisions about his own life and property.

And profit by it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets general freedom local leaders national politics & policies political challengers property rights responsibility too much government

The Real ObamaCare Opposition

Mitch McConnell, Rand Paul, ObamaCare, healthcare bill, opposition

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) has introduced a bill to compromise between the House’s recent Affordable Health Care Act and the current “ObamaCare” Affordable Care Act. Though there seems to be some “what the heck, go with it” enthusiasm for it on Capitol Hill, it’s not coming from Senators Rand Paul of Kentucky, Ted Cruz of Texas, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Mike Lee of Utah.

‘‘Currently, for a variety of reasons, we are not ready to vote for this bill,” their joint statement from yesterday reads.

Their objections? Well, they agree that there are “provisions in this draft that represent an improvement to our current healthcare system but. . .”

— and this is a big but —

“it does not appear this draft as written will accomplish the most important promise that we made to Americans: to repeal Obamacare and lower their healthcare costs.’’ Their opposition, the Boston Globe tells us, puts the TrumpCare wannabe in jeopardy.

Dr. Rand Paul is the key figure in the opposition. One of Capitol Hill’s ongoing amusements has been to watch the junior Kentucky senator repeatedly pit himself against his state’s senior member — who, the Globe tells us, now threatens “to bring the bill to a vote next week even if he doesn’t have the necessary votes.”

Pressure tactics.

Which you need to put an obviously bad bill through Congress.

Too many mainstream Republican congressmen lack the courage of their constituents’ convictions. They apparently do not really believe that a freed-up health care system and insurance market can work to the general good.

At least, not in time for the next election.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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folly free trade & free markets local leaders moral hazard nannyism property rights responsibility too much government

Housing Horror

Oregon, housing, rent control, urban, planning, low income, land, property rights

Housing in Oregon’s north-central urban region is becoming more and more like San Francisco’s — out of the budgetary reach of huge swaths of average workers.

“The median rental household can’t comfortably afford a two-bedroom apartment in 28 of Oregon’s 36 counties,” Elliot Njus writes for The Oregonian. But it is worst in Portland and the three counties in the region: Multnomah, Washington, Clackamas. 

The findings come from a group called the National Low Income Housing Coalition. Njus quotes Alison McIntosh, of another group, the Neighborhood Partnerships, who not unreasonably concludes that “folks are really struggling to make ends meet.”

Well, yeah. This was predicted, long ago.

The state of Oregon began a comprehensive land-use planning system, decades ago, to prevent urban sprawl. At about the same time the Portland-region’s three major counties began a concentrated effort to . . . concentrate populations within the area. Confine them. Regulate them. Economists and other critics* from the very beginning predicted rising housing costs. And other problems.

Now, of course, the usual groups react in precisely the wrong ways: rent control. The State House in Salem recently passed legislation to uncork rent control. Thankfully for renters, the Senate nixed the idea. 

But we can be sure this proven housing killer (a disaster where tried) will resurface. Common sense (as well as reams of economic research) tells folks how bad an idea this would be, exacerbating the problem it aims to solve.

Alas, some folks look at government more as magic than as just another flawed, human institution.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* One set of critics can be found at the Cascade Policy Institute, which describes Oregon’s land-use regulatory system as “the nation’s most restrictive” — adding that “every square inch of Oregon has been zoned by government planners, with the result that development of any type is prohibited on most private land.”

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Accountability folly free trade & free markets general freedom initiative, referendum, and recall nannyism national politics & policies property rights responsibility too much government

Minimum Shock

minimum wage, closure, restaurant, business, prohibition, wages, pay, Berkeley, San Francisco

“Three restaurants vacated the Bay this week, with Berkeley’s Bistro Liaison getting the most attention,” the San Francisco edition of Eater informs us. “It’s a bittersweet exit for the owners, who plan to start new careers.”

The week in question was in February. But this was not an isolated event. Sixty-four Bay-area restaurants and fast food joints closed their doors this last winter.

That is a lot of closures.

Why?

Every eatery has a different story, but the entry December 17* provides a big clue: minimum wage hikes.

Citizens should hardly be surprised. They got what they asked for. The minimum wage went up to $13.00 per hour last July, and will go up another two bucks next year. And this was the result of a citizen initiative. “On November 4, 2014, San Francisco voters passed Proposition J, raising the minimum wage to $15.00 by 2018,” the City Office of Labor Standards and Enforcement tells us.

And the thing about minimum wage laws is that they do not — either by magic or by law — directly raise any wages. They, by law and quite directly, prohibit wage contracts below the minimum established.

Businesses then react, struggling to accommodate the newly imposed costs. Sometimes they keep all their employees and economize on other inputs, but often they must re-arrange hours and workers and whole production schemes.

If hemmed in elsewhere, they just go out of business.

Just as one should expect, according to the law of supply and demand.**

Citizens might wish to reconsider. That is, initiate a measure to repeal a previously successful initiative . . . that gave us this unsuccessful policy.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* The entry reads thusly: “OAKLAND — alaMar Kitchen and Bar as you know it is shuttering on December 17, but will reopen in the new year with a fast casual format. The owner points to minimum wage raises and the cost of doing business in the Bay Area as the reasons cited for the closure/change.”

** It is often said that businesses just “raise prices” and “pass along the costs” to consumers in general, but, for reasons of supply and demand, they cannot do this without decreasing sales and thus revenue.

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